Intelligence: Iran building nuke sites
Sites point to nuclear weapons development
MSNBC
By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS PRODUCER
Dec. 13 — A senior U.S. official told NBC News on Thursday that recent intelligence indicates Iran is building two large and potentially significant nuclear facilities south of Tehran. Moreover, there may be other facilities yet undiscovered. The information raises fears that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program more actively than previously thought.
THE NEWLY REVEALED facilities are a combination nuclear research lab and gas centrifuge plant for producing enriched uranium at Natanz and a heavy-water production plant at Arak, both south of Tehran.
The heavy-water production facility is the more significant of the two, said one senior U.S. official, noting that heavy water is used to moderate nuclear reactions in research reactors that are ideal for producing plutonium. Iran is not known to have any such reactors — so the heavy-water facility could be an indication that the Iranians have a reactor that the United States is not aware of.
The combination could indicate Iran is pursuing both routes to a nuclear weapon — highly enriched uranium and plutonium, making its program much more ambitious than previously revealed.
“They certainly are suspicious,” said the U.S. official of the facilities at Natanz and Arak, adding that “another facility — the research reactor — is possible.”
SIZE MATTERS
“It looks like a large uranium enrichment plant at Natanz... We think centrifuges,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has analyzed satellite imagery of the facilities. “The plant is huge, 100,000 square feet, and indicates outside help.” Albright said his group, the CIA and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) have all come to the same conclusion. Centrifuges are the most efficient way to separate weapons-grade uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
The Natanz site is a possible uranium enrichment facility, possibly a gas centrifuge site. It is located approximately 100 miles south of Tehran.
In addition, says Albright, it is difficult to believe that Iran would have built such a large plant without first experimenting with a pilot enrichment facility, though U.S. officials know of no such facility in Iran.
The biggest concern, though, says Albright, is the heavy-water facility at Arak. “Iran doesn’t need a heavy-water plant unless it has a heavy-water reactor, and we don’t know of any such reactor.” Heavy-water reactors have been used by several aspiring nuclear states to produce plutonium.
“There has to be a heavy-water reactor somewhere,” he said, echoing the U.S. official.
The existence of the facilities at Natanz and Arak was first revealed in August by an Iranian opposition group, but not confirmed by U.S. officials until Thursday. In August, Ali Reza Jafarzadeh, a Washington representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, stated: “These two secret sites are away from the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the purpose of these sites is both for the production of nuclear fuel and also the research and expertise to be able to make the bomb.”
Neither facility has been “declared” to the IAEA, the UN agency that monitors nuclear developments to ensure they are peaceful.
Under its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments, Iran must declare any nuclear site to the IAEA in Vienna and permit inspectors to visit the facilities. However, under the treaty, the Iranians do not have to declare a facility to the IAEA until it is complete.
The IAEA reacted to the dissident group’s disclosure by asking for an inspection in September and ordering commercial satellite imagery of the areas, ultimately discovering the two facilities. Iran has rebuffed the IAEA twice, most recently canceling a visit scheduled for last week. The IAEA is now scheduled to visit the plants in February.
Iran insisted on Friday it had no hidden nuclear activities and said the International Atomic Energy Agency was welcome to inspect any nuclear facilities in the country it had information about.
“We don’t have any hidden atomic activities. All our nuclear activities are for non-military fields,” government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told reporters.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency is informed about our (nuclear) activities and the use of nuclear material either for research, chemical or medicine.
“And they can visit wherever in Iran that either we have informed them about or they have information about,” he added.
Albright dismisses Iran’s denial, saying the Iranian plans for nuclear weapons appear “grandiose” based on what is evident from the size of the facilities at Natanz and Arak as well as what is not yet revealed.
PLANS TO EXPAND
Previously, much of the attention on Iran’s nuclear weapons program was focused on a huge nuclear reactor being completed by Russian and Iranian engineers at Bushehr on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.
The Russians managed to allay U.S. concerns about the project, insisting that Iran’s nuclear program was entirely peaceful. Intelligence officials agreed at the time that the Russian reactors were for civilian use. “What concerns us are the contacts the Iranians can establish in Russia or former Soviet states for acquiring other equipment and the expertise Iran develops under this program,” said one official.
“Iranians are very xenophobic; they want to buy one and figure out how to make their own rather than just buy outright,” said another. “They’re clearly working at a nuclear weapons program, although not as intently as the Iraqis. It will be years yet before they have nuclear capability. We can’t stop it, but we can slow it.”
The United States has long believed that the Iranian program has been plagued by incompetence and corruption that has hindered its success. Recent changes in the management of the program have led to some reforms and acceleration of the program.
In related news, Iran’s state-run television reported Thursday that the country was considering construction of a second major nuclear power plant and had ordered a feasibility study on the project. The country’s first nuclear power station, at Bushehr, has been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and is slated to go on line next year with Russian help.
“The council has authorized Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to study the construction of a new 1,000-megawatt plant with due consideration of environmental standards using the experience achieved from the completion of the first unit of Bushehr nuclear power plant,” Tehran television reported.
It said the decision was made during a council meeting Wednesday attended by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref.
It was not clear if Russia would be involved in the construction of the new plant. The Kremlin has floated preliminary plans to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors over the next 10 years.
Both Russia and Iran insist that the Bushehr plant will be strictly for civilian purposes and open to international inspection. However, successive U.S. administrations have expressed concern over the plant.
The Bush administration has offered Russia economic incentives to abandon the Bushehr project but the Russians have not accepted the offer. Russia has denied consistently it is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons or with its missiles program.
In September, Russia drew up a plan for the return of spent nuclear fuel from Bushehr, seeking to allay U.S. concerns that the fuel could be used by terrorists and others to build weapons of mass destruction.
Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News, based in New York. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/846867.aspPOLITICS-U.S.:
New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights
Analysis - By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (IPS) - A neo-conservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to ''roll back'' the Ba'ath-led government in Syria has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
David Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney's staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, in mid-September, according to Cheney's office.
The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the dominant foreign-policy influence on President George W. Bush, but also because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the ''neo-cons'' before the war.
Given the recent intensification of tensions between Washington and Damascus -- touched off by this month's U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution deploring an Israeli air attack on an alleged Palestinian camp outside Damascus -- Wurmser's rise takes on added significance.
The move also follows House of Representatives' approval of a bill that would impose new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria.
Wurmser's status as a favoured protege of arch-hawk and former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also speaks loudly to Middle East specialists, who note Perle's long-time close association with Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Wolfowitz was the first senior administration official to suggest that Washington might take action against Syria amid reports last April that Damascus was sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the U.S. invasion.
''There's got to be a change in Syria,'' Wolfowitz said, accusing the government of President Bashar Assad of ''extreme ruthlessness''. Rumsfeld subsequently accused Syria of permitting Islamic ''jihadis'' to infiltrate Iraq to fight U.S. troops.
Perle, who last week was in Israel to receive a special award from the ''Jerusalem Summit'', an international group of right wing Jews and Christian Zionists who describe themselves as defenders of ''civilisation'' against ''Islamic fundamentalism'', has made no secret of his own desire to confront Damascus.
In a series of interviews, Perle applauded Israel's attack on Syrian territory -- the first since the 1967 war -- in alleged retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel. ''I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli Air Force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages,'' he said.
Perle said he ''hope(d)'' the United States would itself take action against Damascus, particularly if it turned out that Syria was acting as a financial or recruiting base for the insurgency in Iraq.
''Syria is itself a terrorist organisation,'' he asserted, insisting that Washington would not find it difficult to send troops to Damascus despite its commitment in Iraq. ''Syria is militarily very weak,'' added Perle.
Damascus has been in Wurmser's sights at least since he began working with Perle at AEI in the mid-1990s.
For the latter part of the decade, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Baathist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by ''tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments''.
Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.
''Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,'' he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).
Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.
The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm', was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading ''land for peace'' by transforming the ''balance of power'' in the Middle East in favour of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.
To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.
Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by ''Israeli proxy forces'' based in Lebanon and ''striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper''.
''Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria,'' the report argued, to create a ''natural axis'' between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq and Turkey that ''would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula''.
''For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity,'' it suggested.
A follow-up report by Wurmser titled 'Coping with Crumbling States', also favoured a substantial redrawing of the Middle East along tribal and familial lines in light of what he called an ''emerging phenomenon -- the crumbling of Arab secular-nationalist nations''.
The penchant of Washington and the West in general for backing secular-nationalist states against the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism was a strategic error, warned Wurmser in the second study, a conclusion he repeated in a 1999 book, 'Tyranny's Ally', which included a laudatory foreword by Perle and was published by AEI.
While the book focused on Iraq not Syria, it elaborated on Wurmser's previous arguments by attacking regional specialists in U.S. universities, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who, according to him, were too wedded to strong secular states in the Arab world as the preferred guarantors of regional stability.
''Our Middle East scholarly and policy elite are informed by bad ideas about the region that lead them to bad policies,'' he charged, echoing a position often taken by Perle.
In the book's acknowledgments, Wurmser praised those who most influenced his work, a veritable ''who's who'' of those neo-cons most closely tied to Israel's far right, including Perle himself, another AEI scholar, Michael Ledeen and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy and the man in charge of post-Iraq war planning, Douglas Feith.
He listed former CIA director James Woolsey, who has called the conflict in Syria the early stages of ''World War IV'', Harold Rhode, a Feith aide who has also called himself Wolfowitz's ''Islamic Affairs adviser'' and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi.
Wurmser also gave thanks to Irving Moskowitz, a major casino operator and long-time funder of Israel's settlement movement, whom he described as a ''gentle man whose generous support of AEI allows me to be here''. (END/2003)
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20712
